A tree 50 to 70 ft high; young shoots very stout, and like the common stalk of the leaf, clothed with brown, glandular hairs. Leaves 11⁄2 to 2 ft (in vigorous young trees 3 ft) long, composed of eleven to nineteen leaflets, which are oblong, taper-pointed, finely toothed, obliquely rounded or slightly heart-shaped at the base, 3 to 7 in. long, 11⁄4 to 21⁄2 in. wide; when young, both surfaces are furnished, the lower one especially, with starry tufts of down, much of which afterwards falls away from the upper side. Male catkins 4 to 10 in. long, slender, pendulous. Fruits clustered several on a stalk, roundish ovoid, 13⁄4 in. long, covered with sticky down; nut deeply pitted and grooved, 11⁄2 in. long, abruptly pointed at the top.
Native of the Russian Far East, especially in the region of the Amur and Ussuri rivers, and of N. China; first introduced by Maximowicz to the St Petersburg Botanic Garden. As a young tree it is, like J. ailantifolia, remarkably striking in the size of its leaves. It is closely allied to that species but does not succeed so well; botanically, the chief difference is in the form of the nuts, and the leaves of J. mandshurica are distinctly more slender-pointed.